The IRS answers tax law questions inaccurately 15 percent of the time. How is the agency supposed to automatically do our taxes?

By Richard McCarty

A new bill, the so-called “Tax Simplification Act,” by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) would allow the IRS to automatically do taxes on behalf of taxpayers. Does she take the American people for fools?

The IRS’s performance with answering questions in person has been, at least at times, even worse. In 2001, the Treasury Department found that the IRS gave its investigators inaccurate or insufficient information 73 percent of the time at taxpayer assistance centers. As bad as that error rate is, it had been 81 percent the previous year.

The IRS even admits that its publications (which summarize tax law), private letter rulings (which address specific taxpayers and their specific circumstances), and revenue rulings (which address how tax law would be applied to a certain subset of taxpayers) may not be accurate. In other words, if the IRS asserts that a taxpayer owes additional taxes, the taxpayer cannot refute the IRS’s claim based solely on an IRS publication, a private letter ruling issued to another taxpayer, or a revenue ruling.

Given the IRS’s decades-long struggle to provide accurate information to taxpayers, Congress should think twice before adding any further complexity to the tax laws or assigning any new programs to the IRS. Sen. Warren’s legislation is simply asking too much from an agency that has not earned the trust of the American people.

Richard McCarty is the Director of Research of Americans for Limited Government Foundation.